Book Review: Kitchenability 101 - The College Student's Guide to Easy, Healthy, and Delicious Food

You have spent the last decade or more trying to save money and prepare your child for college.  You have taken them shopping for the basic things that they will need to survive during their first year away from home.  But if you think that you have all of the bases covered, you need to check out Kitchenability 101:  The College Student's Guide to Easy, Healthy, and Delicious Food by Nisa Burns.

This book includes 65 easy, affordable, and healthy recipes designed with high school and college students in mind.  The book offers personal and practical advice to improve your student's abilities in the kitchen.  It helps students discover the satisfaction of cooking on a budget for themselves and for their friends.

Author Nisa Burns is a culinary graduate of the Art Institute of Virginia Beach and CEO of Kitchenability, Inc.  Her company was founded with the goal of giving students the confidence and skills to make easy, healthy, and delicious foods suited to their lifestyles.  Burns contends that if colleges had a mandatory introduction to cooking class, more students would become lifelong healthy eaters.

The book begins with a wealth of information devoted to setting up a basic, working kitchen designed for the students specific living accommodations.  Author Burns includes sections on dorm room essentials, must-have utensils, and basic pantry staples.  She also provides QR codes that point the reader to her instructional videos where she provides information from basic cooking techniques to shopping advice.  Here is one example of these videos:  how to cut an onion and stretching your budget by shopping at a farmer's market.  Kitchenability is divided into several chapters with a multitude of fundamental recipes that help students gain confidence as they develop their culinary skills.  

As part of our review, we prepared two dishes:  Creamy Hummus Dip and Bananas Foster.  The hummus was very easy to make.  Within 5 minutes we had fresh homemade hummus that tasted better than the brand that we usually buy at the store.  The author's suggestion of adding sun dried tomatoes to the mix would make this recipe even better.  This was a simple, fundamental recipe that can serve as a quick and easy snack or a building block for a more complex dish.  Next, we tried Bananas Foster another classic recipe that was easy and affordable to prepare. This dish has a long history and was first prepared back in the early 1950s at Brennan's Restaurant in New Orleans.  This was a great tasting, simple dessert that we put together in a matter of minutes.  Overall, Kitchenability 101 provides the essentials for college students to explore and develop their culinary skills.  In her debut effort, Author Nisa Burns has provided an outstanding collection of healthy, easy, economic, and fun recipes for students to explore.  We give Kitchenability 4 out of 5 stars.